AMBULANCE chiefs have hit back at claims the service is failing Northwich residents over its response time to emergency calls.

AMBULANCE chiefs have hit back at claims the service is failing Northwich residents over its response time to emergency calls.

It has been claimed that South Cheshire is the only health authority out of six across Cheshire and Merseyside which has not reported an improvement in ambulance response times over the past year.

But emergency service bosses say the claims are misleading. Urging residents not to worry, they say although the ambulance service in South Cheshire has failed to meet a Government target of responding to 75% of life-threatening 999 calls within eight minutes, it has made significant improvements over the past two years.

Response to 999 calls within eight minutes is up by 10% and ambulance chiefs say it is only the rural nature of the area which prevents them meeting the target.

Performance from April 1-September 23 shows that 67.6% life-threatening calls in the area were responded to in eight minutes, compared to 57.1% in 1999/2000.

And the Mersey Regional Ambulance NHS Trust, which is responsible for operating the service, stresses that the difference between its current response time and the 75% target represents just two or three calls in any 24-hour period.

A spokeswoman said: 'For example, on September 26, 28 life threatening calls were received in South Cheshire, of which 18 were responded to in eight minutes, equalling 64.29%. Had two more calls been reached in that time, performance would have stood at 75%.

'The trust is also required to respond to 95% of serious but not life-threatening calls in 14 minutes.

'From April 1 to September 23, it responded to 92% in 14 minutes, compared with 87.1% in 1999/2000.'

Nigel Wylie, Mersey Regional Ambulance's director of operations, said: 'We wish to reassure the public that all efforts are made to ensure ambulances arrive on the scene of an emergency as quickly as possible and our crews work very hard, often in difficult and demanding circumstances, to deliver high quality service.

'Ambulance services were given until March to achieve the 75% and 95% performance targets on a trust-wide basis.

'This was a major challenge for the trust and improvements against the eight-minute life-threatening standard enabled us to announce in July 2000 that we were the first urban ambulance trust in England to deliver the new standards.'